After doing 180 miles per hour on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway this week, I ticked off another item on my lifetime Bucket List. I’m not a great fan of motor racing, but this was an opportunity too cool to pass up.

Squeezing a passenger into a modified racing car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The passenger seat is directly behind the driver.

I was in Indianapolis for the annual conference of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) and presentation of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism awards for the SATW Foundation (check the winners at SATWF.com).

From restaurants to public parks and museums, this city sure knows how to plan free time for folks at a conference.

We ate well. Loved my multi-course tasting dinners at Chef Joseph’s and Naked Tchopstix. We slept well at the impressive JW Marriott downtown. Those folks know how to run a convention.

Wearing fire suit and helmet

At least 50 of us from the conference bused over to the nearby Speedway, donned a fire suit, head sock and helmet, for a 5-mile ride, which is twice around the track in a race car owned by the Indycar Experience.

Was I frightened? Did I picture my remains splattered against the outside wall of one of America’s most famous motorways?

Not really; there wasn't time. Each trip around the circle was less than a minute.

I wasn’t driving of course; an Indy expert was piloting one of several cars that have been modified to add a cramped passenger seat (see picture).

I was strapped in so tight that I could barely wiggle, which is a good thing, because the air was rushing at me so fast that I didn’t want to move for fear that some part of my body would be left behind.

On the first trip around the oval, we whooshed by the finish line at full speed, or at full a speed as the law will allow the Indycar Experience to haul passengers — about 45 mph slower than top speed in a race.

New respect for race car drivers

At 180 mph, it’s easy to be a passenger, but I wouldn’t want to be driving at such speeds alone on the track, and it was difficult to imagine the skill required to race other cars only a few feet away, and do all that 200 times around the track.

At the Dallara Indycar Factory next door, I managed to get a virtual car up to 180 mph, but I lost control, crashed and flipped upside down.

My slower drive back to Oberlin, Ohio, through the cornfields, was a more familiar route, which for decades was a family path to Indiana for my mom, who grew up in Marion, north of Indianapolis. She was at her parents’ house when she gave birth to her first child.

Yes, that makes me a Hoosier, more so now that I’ve survived the Speedway in an Indy racecar.